Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Severe weather/Tornado

Revamp

I propose that the standards be changed for tornado outbreak articles.

Lead section States the number of tornadoes, fatalities. Briefly describes any strange events and records set. (Required, no seperate header)

Meteorological synopsis Describes weather leading up to the outbreak and SPC products issued.(Required)

Significant storms (Variable name) Describes the most significant storms and tornadoes (Required)

Confirmed tornadoes Tornado table, no text besides that in the table (Required, should be split into list if very large)

Aftermath Describes aftermath in detail, should also include disaster decelerations (Required)

Recovery Requires the article to be revisited every once and awhile for an update. Should only be used if enough information is available.

Non-thunderstorm effects/Non-tornadic effects Use the first if snow or other non-thunderstorm events occurred (Optional) The latter should be standard on all pages describing effects from a squall line, hail, flash flooding, or other non-tornadic effects (Required)

Oddities/Records Only used if necessary (Optional)

References (Required)

See also Should always link to at least "List of REGION tornado outbreaks" (i.e. List of North American tornadoes and tornado outbreaks) or List and "Tornadoes of Year" (Required)

External links External links should only go to news stories or NWS pages (Required)

Categories: *F-rating of tornado *Tornadoes of year *Tornadoes of geographic region *Year in nation

These standards have been developed for tornado outbreaks where a alot of information is available. Older outbreaks should include as much information as possible.

Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 18:08, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Structure

Comment: I don't think that the overview section that you list really needs to be there. Ideally, that kind of information should be included in the lead section, so when people start reading the article they know exactly what they're reading about. After the lead, I think a meteorological synopsis is a natural place to start, since that is kind of at the beginning and would go in chronological order. One change I would like to see though is that any tornado table be included more towards the end of the article, or at least after the parts about the rest of the tornadoes. IMO it can get annoying to scroll past 50 tornadoes before I can read about a few of the major ones. Gopher backer (talk) 03:41, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I was just using "Overview" as the name for the lead section, so I changed it to avoid confusion. I also realized it would be a good idea to move confirmed tornadoes down. With some more comments/votes, it should become the new standard. Thanks for all your feedback, Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 03:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment: One more suggestion, I think that a Recovery section could be added to articles as well (following Aftermath). This is more ambitious however and I don't think should be required. This would demand revisiting the article a year or more after it happened, but if people are up to it I think it would round out articles nicely. Gopher backer (talk) 15:19, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories

I'm going to also suggest we add a set of default categories detailed here. Gopher backer (talk) 15:17, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Confirmed tornadoes

Let's decide the "magic number" for moving a list of tornadoes to its own page. Or maybe this has already been decided. Gopher backer (talk) 15:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Replies to above

Reply: Those are all great ideas and should be added. I'm not sure if a number has been decided, but about fifty should be right for a new page. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Notability criteria

• Any (E)F5 tornado, provided enough information can be written

• Any (E)F2 or stronger tornado in a major city

• 25 or more tornadoes, with at least one fatality

• 40 or more tornadoes unless a quick spin-up event

• Significant fatalities

These standards were created by User:CrazyC83 in response to two pages being created by an anon, they were deleted. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 23:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I seem to remember these from the past as well. Should these be included as well?

• Any tornado/outbreak that produces at least $250 million in damage
• Other events occurring with the outbreak that help to make it notable (like a winter storm, derecho or hail storm)
• Any outbreak that does not meet the above rules, but has some kind of significant historical standing.

- The last two would be considered "gray areas" and should these articles occur (like the 2008 Vancouver tornado) would ideally would come up for a vote so people could discuss.

Gopher backer (talk) 03:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Thise sound good too. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 12:12, 25 March 2008 (UTC)